time passed and voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increased
the temptations and opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising,
the skillful and the corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a commodity
and to organize public opinion into a bill of lading. Thus politics as
a trade, parties as trademarks, the politicians, like harlots, plying
their vocation.

Now and again an able, honest and brave man, who aims at better things,
appears. In the event that fortune favors him and he attains high
station, he finds himself surrounded and thwarted by men less able and
courageous, who, however equal to discovering right from wrong, yet wear
the party collar, owe fealty to the party machine, are sometimes actual
slaves of the party boss. In the larger towns we hear of the City Hall
ring; out in the counties of the Court House ring. We rarely anywhere
encounter clean, responsible administration and pure, disinterested,
public service.

The taxpayers are robbed before their eyes. The evil grows greater as
we near the centers of population. But there is scarcely a village or
hamlet where graft does not grow like weeds, the voters as gullible
and helpless as the infatuated victims of bunko tricks, ingeniously
contrived by professional crooks to separate the fool and his money. Is
self-government a failure?

None of us would allow the votaries of the divine right of kings to
tell us so, albeit we are ready enough to admit the imperfections of
universal suffrage, too often committing affairs of pith and moment,
even of life and death, to the arbitrament of the mob, and costing more
in cash outlay than royal establishments.

The quadrennial period in American politics, set apart and dedicated
to the election of presidents, magnifies these evil features in an
otherwise admirable system of government. That the whipper-snappers of
the vicinage should indulge their propensities comes as the order of
their nature. But the party leaders are not far behind them. Each side
construes every occurrence as an argument in its favor, assuring it
certain victory. Take, for example, the latest state election anywhere.
In point of fact, it foretold nothing. It threw no light upon coming
events, not even upon current events. It leaves the future as hazy as
before. Yet the managers of either party affect to be equally confident
that it presages the triumph of their ticket in the next national
election. The wonder is that so many of the